To sum it up, my first impression of Idaho was somewhat of a bizzarre metaphor for the whole trip. "Idaho smells like meat." The scent that wafted unrelentingly toward us as we exited the plane at the Boise City airport was undoubtedly, characteristically, that of undercooked pork. Not too pleasant, and strong enough to turn the stomach and somehow send hunger pangs through my woefully underfed self at the same time. It left me with the immediate assumption that this simply must be what Idaho smells like, which fortunately turned out not to be the case as we made it further through the airport, but the memory sticks with me regardless. To me, Idaho will always be reminiscent of underdone barbeque.
FRIDAY:
We got to the hotel with no large difficulty, other than the urge to snap at each other and start fighting as at this point we were sleep-deprived to the point of anger. Met Fuuma there in the lobby, who was dressed up in Haru already, which took the edge off the snappishness. (Heather in leather chaps is and amusing combination of silly and badass, a rare thing indeed) Made it up to the room, finally got to put stuff down and iron stuff and rest and eat REALLY good pizza... after which we were mostly satisfied.
Untill we walked down to check out the AMVs.
SUCKED. SO. BAD. I swear to god, one more DBZ rip that RUINS perfectly good Linkin Park... and I WILL kill something. After one terrible 8 and a half minute growly/screamy/unintelligible metal song to badly hashed clips of Bastard!!, (an anime I REALLY liked, and was angered to see brutalized in that fashion) I actually booed. And the guy next to me turned and said, "Thankyou."
Still, we did stay for the whole contest, which got better toward the end but was really too little too late - again, an apt metaphor for this Con.
After that, we headed over to the YOAI party. Not only was the misspelling in the schedule a disappointment, they had billed it as "hardcore boy/boy anime"... They were showing Yami No Matsuei. Riiiight. Anyway, they did a little mock-cosplay thing wherein the Con tentacle monster (who would be showing up at many other points during the weekend) got his boy-rapin' on with nearly everyone in the room except Ari and I. We were dressed up as X16 Sei and Subaru at that point, and managed to win first place. (they had it judged on audience reaction, and Ari was feeling rather seme, so I'm not surprised the audience liked us best)
The really sad thing that I began to notice at this point, was that absolutely no one seemed to know X. AT ALL. No one except two or three of the people that we had seen at YaoiCon seemed to know who we were at all... So the majority of the weekend was "Cool costume!...Who are you?" Ari was apparently a one-eyed Neo. And people seemed to think she was cosplaying, even in her street clothes. Which is I suppose what you get when you dress like we do and go to Idaho. The severe LACK of an alternative population was actually really disturbing. No black coats... as far as the eye could see. Just minivans and fucking huge potatos.
At this point we decided it was time for sleep, so we all crashed at around midnight, which any Congoer knows, is exceedingly early for a Con.
SATURDAY:
Got up at 9 to register for the cosplay, deciding at the last minute that we *would* in fact do the half-assed skit that had been flitting around my head for the past few nights, and that we would include Sihaya's Setsuka costume for further workmanship points.
Ahhh... last-second cosplay.
The remainder of the hours until 6:00 were spent frantically finishing costumes, cutting hair, and getting people into costumes that took MUCH more time than they rightfully should have to put on. But in the end, my scarf got its gold paint, Setsuka's obi got its hooks and eyes, Fuuma's coat got its buckles attatched properly, and everything looked just damned gorgeous. We looked nowhere near as rushed as the poor coordinator though. It seemed like she was doing the entire thing herself, with only ONE stage monkey to assist. She looked like she was in such a panic, that it was the one time I truly did forgive a cosplay coordinator for being short, angry, and bitchy to the point of demonic.
The skit we did ended up being little more than a glorified walk-on, because the room was such that it was pretty impossible to hear any of Fuuma's lines... or anyone's really unless they were actually screaming.
There was, however, an incredibly awesome Cloud Strife cosplayer there - Jake I believe - who essentially made the whole competition worthwhile, because his costume rocked so much that I felt I actually did have someone to compete with. We discussed cosplay until the judging, which handed us out a fourth major award - Best Costume/Workmanship this time, and the judges awed questioning over whether I had really done all the hand-painting on the kimono.
Ten hours well spent.
I actually found the judging to be surprisingly very fair and well-deserved too. Surprising, for a Con dubbed by an ex-staffer as "Jeremy Con" - "Jeremy" being Con director. We quickly found this to be true too, as the weekend wore on, especially after he found it necessary to show videos of his own cosplay after the contest. And the night before, his own AMVs after the AMV contest....which had also been playing on TVs in the main Con area... and would CONTINUE to play after the events later in the night. >.> Apparently there were only four main staff as well, hence the poor cosplay coordinator's madness. There's more I could say about it, but I shant get into it here, as that's a rant that could easily eat up ten more paragraphs.
A short, but very fruitful photoshoot later, the semes both began to feel too sick to stay up much longer, and we all went back to our rooms to get out of costume. My poor Seishirou-san and Fuuma...;_; They really were sick, it was terrible- and both of them with upset tummies. We went on a short walk to procure painkillers and dramamine for both of them. The painkillers we got from the wonderful Zoi and Manadolly, people from YaoiCon who shared their room and their bounty with us the entire weekend. They deserve much <3!
And.. what can I say. Idaho is also apparently very sheltered if two girls cuddling a little bit in a restaurant while waiting for their food can attract gawkers. >.> Jin-chan found it highly amusing, I just found it odd. Oh well, wasn't the only time people mistook us for a couple, but the second time was pretty funny because the look on the guy's face after I was like "Uhhh.. she's married." was pretty damned precious.
After that we danced a bit, sang some karaoke, attended the sleepwear cosplay, hung out with the wonderful yaoi people, watched more simulated tentacle rapings every time Mr. Tentacle encountered the Tsuzuki cosplayer, and just generally entertained ourselves. We periodically went back up to the room to check on the semes, both of which were asleep most of the time, but for a good while we stayed up there while I nursed poor Fuuma through the high point of her fever. Thank goodness for ice machines. All in all, we managed to make the evening pretty fun, and by this point the Con was most definitely looking up from the first day.
SUNDAY:
Got up for the cosplay cooking contest... which was pretty much a disaster, as the burners they'd gotten for us shorted out two of the sockets in the convention center before they figured out it just wasnt going to work. It was pretty fun though, with tons of people acting in character from Ranma1/2, YnM, Ninja Burger etc. I won best food, as apparently mine actually tasted good even though it wasn't fully cooked. >.>
Also got to see our cosplay skit, which had been taped... and apparently is going to be shown on a local TV station? o.o News to me.
What was probably the highlight of the Con for me though, came at the very end of it. While we were sitting around playing DDR, someone wandered by with two cinnamon buns and asked me if I wanted them because he needed to get rid of them. I happily accepted...and then tormented a Tsuzuki cosplayer with them for about ten minutes, making her kiss my feet and grovel before I finally gave her one of them. It was at that point that I realized the real point of this Con. We didn't get to see any new anime, in fact the entire Con seemed to be about 5 years behind in the new releases scene. We didn't have a really great dance, most of the time the music was pretty terrible. We MOST CERTAINLY DID NOT see stunning AMVs. We weren't blown away by good cosplay left and right. (though the caliber of cosplay was downright startling for a Con that was only JUST upwards of 200 attendees) We didn't work our asses off to win a prestigious award. Those things I can safely say have been the highlights of other Cons, and definitely did not apply to Anime Oasis. Yet, what we DID do was have fun and hang out with people... something we hadn't been able to do at other "big" Cons, that here had been accomplished admirably. I'd actually met new people, hooked up with old friends, and gotten to spend time with folks I don't get to see nearly enough of.
And, at the end, it almost makes me want to go back. If only I could have ignored the itching, burning question that all of us asked each other multiple times since the start of it all.
"Why are in Idaho?"